After about seven months in Trinidad we sailed to Bequia, where we spent almost another month in pretty much perfect surroundings. Excellent holding ground, lobsters and moray-eels living right under the boat, the beach white and fringed with palm-trees - one could get used to that. Plenty of charter boats and sky-high prices, though.
Anyway, the GRIB-Files indicated reasonably good weather for the next eight days and so we weighed anchor and took off towards Panama. Liping took just 25 mg Meclizine Hydrochloride and didn't have any problems with sea-sickness whatsoever. Aurora Ulani had to throw up about three times for the first three days and I was slightly nauseous for about four or five days. Fortunately that was it.
All went smoothly until we came into the vicinity of Maracaibo in Venezuela. However, as soon as we were off Colombia, conditions began to deteriorate. Not that we had squalls or the usual kinds of bad weather. It stayed pretty much sunny all the way until we reached Panama. It was just that the wind got stronger and stronger.
When we had steady 40 knots, I began to take in sail and thought that things would soon go down to 35 knots or, preferably, a tad lower. Instead, the winds picked up until we had steady 50 knots with mountainous following seas (my guess is between five and eight meters). I was amazed, because I just could not believe that we were having this kind of weather in the Caribbean - and with the sun shining to boot.
We had noticed that the winds picked up as soon as it got dark and the instruments seemed to bear out this observation. All seemed to be going reasonably well, until I noticed that this time the wind climbed up from the 50+ knots to 60 knots. (We had just the tiniest scrap of the jib up, because otherwise we would go sideways to the seas. We surfed at 15+ knots at that time.) That's when I finally got really scared, because the word hurricane kept popping up in my head. And after the typhoon we experienced in September 1994 in Taiwan (a window blew out, glass pierced the plywood I put to replace the window, sofa & arm-chairs flew away, a heavy steel washing machine disintegrated &c. &c. ) I had absolutely no illusions as to what would happen to us, if we were in the dangerous semicircle of a hurricane.
Blue water came over the deck and more than once a wave broke right into our cockpit. Unfortunately our sails suffered badly as well. The jib developed a hole, which enlarged itself within seconds to impressive proportions, but I didn't dare to take it all in. Earlier on the main had ripped itself off the first three mast-sliders. I was sitting at the wheel in foul-weather gear, harness and life-line, in order to correct our course if the boat should get out of control while surfing. When things were at their worst, that happened every two minutes or so. I had the feeling that we might not make it this time. Fortunately it was only my fear speaking.
In the morning I saw a cargo-ship beating towards weather (probably bound for Cartagena) and making heavy work of it. I called the captain on the VHF and asked for the weather report. He was kinda busy at the time, but about half an hour later he came back and read it to me. Surprisingly the weather report talked of only 25 to 35 knots of wind and a maximum swell of 4 meters. No change for the next 48 hours. When he signed off, the captain shouted: "Good luck!!!"
It took us a little while to get to Panama and while the situation got slightly better, it never got reasonably comfortable. At any time, the winds would go up to 40 or even above 50 knots, while the sea was confused and exceedingly boisterous. And, of course, it was around midnight when we arrived. Nothing to do, but take down all sail and wait for daylight.
We reported to Cristobal Signal Station, had to wait for one cargo-ship to go through the small entrance and anchored in the flats not much later.
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What we got to hear in the few days since we arrived, has made us reevaluate the whole experience. Nobody here remembers anything like this storm. Of 18 yachts in the anchorage, 16 dragged anchor and one yacht got lost and sank (divers floated her again already). Three cargo-ships got thrown ashore. Two biggies collided out in the roads and most of them left to avoid a similar fate. Apparently 16 people died here as a direct result of the weather.
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We have had our boat measured today and we are thinking of going through the Panama Canal in a week or so. It'll take two days, but we know that the Pacific is waiting on the other side and we are more than eager to sail on to the South Seas once more.
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